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<title>don't know what you have (until it's gone) by klohau</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29245776">don't know what you have (until it's gone)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/klohau/pseuds/klohau'>klohau</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Depression, Gen, How Do I Tag, Loneliness, Lowercase, Murder, Survivor Guilt, konoha has some messed up morals tbh, no beta we die like haku in wave, wrote this for my school newspaper then got told it was probably too depressun :)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:55:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>789</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29245776</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/klohau/pseuds/klohau</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>he’s not sure how he got here.</p><p>wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that everything was fine? how had everything fallen apart so fast, like grains of sand sliding out of his desperately clasped hands? it was easy to see past things that had happened because he had other people to rely on, but now?</p><p>(trigger warnings inside!!)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>don't know what you have (until it's gone)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <i>tw! character deaths, depression, massive survivor's guilt, lots of murder haha :)</i>
</p><p>he’s not sure how he got here.</p><p>wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that everything was fine? how had everything fallen apart so fast, like grains of sand sliding out of his desperately clasped hands? it was easy to see past things that had happened because he had other people to rely on, but now?</p><p>obito died <s>to save him</s>. he still had rin and sensei.</p><p>rin died <s>by his own hand</s>. he still had sensei.</p><p>sensei died <s>because the third didn’t let him help</s>. who does he have now?</p><p>gai helps. he’s like a splash of colour in the monochromatic world of grey most things are now, but he’s… special. high maintenance, the type of social interaction that needs days in between to survive. still, he’s so so thankful for the older, energetic man. somehow, he shows up right when he needs a distraction because the thoughts in his head take a sharper turn.</p><p>he doesn’t want to think about what might have happened, what might still happen.</p><p>he doesn’t know what he’s meant to do with each passing day now. even now, he’s standing in silence in front of the memorial stone, telling the dead of the things he wants to do, of the things he wants to do with them. he mourns for obito and his bright attitude, for rin and her bright smiles, for sensei and his son that would never be treated right in this village. the list went on and on and on.</p><p>he thinks it’s similar to what drowning would feel like.</p><p>the third won’t let him drown himself in missions, probably out of some sort of misplaced pity since he’s now truly lost his entire team, and he’s mad. he hates and hates and hates the way how the only thing everyone seems to look at him with is pity now, can’t they see that he’s doing fine?? konoha’s still got their genius little shinobi, what more could they want??</p><p>he thinks to himself i don’t know who i am anymore.</p><p>it’s on a day when it feels like it’s he’s about to suffocate when one of konoha’s elders approaches him. he recognizes this man - sensei hadn’t liked him very much, but he brought up good points that poked at the hidden, dark parts in him that he squirrelled away <s>what if the hokage had caused sensei’s death by not letting anyone help?</s> and offered him a place in his elite anbu ranks.</p><p>he doesn’t like elder shimura, but agrees to join - maybe he’ll be able to stop thinking if he kills long enough. </p><p>if he’s a good enough shinobi, maybe they’ll let him help next time because he knows, just knows that there will be a next time. he trains and trains and trains himself to not care, to turn back into the model rulebook shinobi he was before everything went downhill, but he can’t seem to let go of the words that obito said.</p><p>those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.</p><p>those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.</p><p>worse than trash.</p><p>nearly half a year later, he still clings to those words his - friend, rival - had said, and he isn’t always drowning anymore. most days the guilt still presses down and smothers him in the pain, but he’s… getting better. he shows up to jounin gatherings (although he doesn’t talk to anyone and hides in a corner the whole time), and when he hears that elder shimura has a plan to assassinate hokage-sama “for the good of konoha”, he spills it out to the man himself. </p><p>three months later he’s pulled out from root, and he drags behind him kinoe, a mokuton user and the only survivor from orochimaru’s human experiments. he calls him his cute little kouhai gets called senpai back and it sends a burst of something warm through his chest that he’s so scared of (kinoe-turned-yamato-turned-tenzo will die and it’ll be his fault, it’s always his fault) and he spends three days hiding from himself at the memorial stone.</p><p>then tenzo gets hurt on a mission by iwa nin, and he’s sorry that he’s tried to keep away from his cute little kouhai, and he kneels over his comatose body and feels for the first time in years that he wants to fix himself, even if it’s only to teach yamato how to be a functional human being. he looks up, and the sun seems so much brighter than it ever has been. it gives him a sliver of hope and he latches onto it and realizes something.</p><p>
  <i>his name is kakashi.</i>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>why didn't my educational institute approve of my non-violent story to post on their digital newspaper :p</p></blockquote></div></div>
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